This is the homepage for Brian Golding. My laboratory
at McMaster University is interested in the area of molecular
evolution, bioinformatics, and sequence analysis. Our research attempts
to understand how the processes of evolution act to cause the changes
observed between molecules, between genes and between genomes.

The recent
advances in molecular genetics are providing a storm of new data on
DNA sequences, on gene structure and higher order genomic structure.
However, the implications of these new data are not always clear.
This area of scientific inquiry is a relatively new inter-disciplinary
field between biology, computer science and mathematics. We make use
of computer based analysis, statistical analysis and mathematical models
to answer broad questions about the molecular biology of all organisms.

All of our work deals with aspects of bioinformatics/computational biology/molecular evolution. Currently we are examining

The relationships of amino acid replacements to the three
dimensional structure of proteins and what controls the
patterns of these replacements.

The presence of unusual repetitive segements in proteins.
What are they doing there, how did they originate, why are
they not in protein structures but are in the sequence
data, how to efficiently detect them?

The detection of horizontally transferred genes. The
patterns of transfer between species. What limits
horizontal transfer (are there any limits)? How do
transfers occur? What size chunks are transferred etc?

Theoretical studies of the dynamics of genes in populations and
species.